If I have to be completely honest with you, and this is an indictment of their research, it seems heavily dependent on what the protest is for or against.

They consider it non-violent.

This refers to Chenoweth’s research, and I’m somewhat familiar with their work. I think it’s good to clarify what non-violent means to them, as it’s non-obvious. For example, are economic boycotts violence? They harm businesses and keep food of the tables of workers. I don’t think that’s violence, but some people do, and what really matters here is what Chenoweth thinks violence is, and what they mean when they say “nonviolent tactics are more effective”.

At the end of “civil resistance: what everyone needs to know”, Chenoweth lists a number of campaigns which they’ve marked as violent/nonviolent and successful/unsuccessful. Let’s look at them and the tactics employed tonfigure out what exactly Chenoweth is advocating for. Please do not read this as a condemnation of their work, or of the protests that follow. This is just an investigation into what “nonviolence” means to Chenoweth.

Euromaidan: successful, nonviolent. In these protests, protestors threw molotov cocktails and bricks and at the police. I remember seeing a video of an apc getting absolutely melted by 10 or so molotovs cocktails.

The anti-Pinochet campaign: successful, nonviolent. This involved at least one attempt on Pinochet’s life.

Gwangju uprising in South Korea: unsuccessful, nonviolent. Car plowed into police officers, 4 dead.

Anti-Duvalier campaign in Haiti: successful, nonviolent. Destruction of government offices.

To summarize, here’s some means that are included in Chenoweth’s research:

• throwing bricks at the police
• throwing molotov cocktails at the police
• assassination attempts
• driving a car into police officers
• destroying government offices

The point here is not that these protests were wrong, they weren’t. The point is that they employed violent tactics in the face of state violence. Self-defense is not violence, and this article completely ignores this context, and heavily and knowingly implies that sitting in a circle and singing kumbaya is the way to beat oppression. It isn’t.

It’s affecting the older generations too. My grandma loved playing solitaire on her laptop. I asked her “did that come with the OS?” And she responded with “What’s an OS”. Crazy times.

I think you don’t fully understand the intention behind the argument. Rather than being part of some mathematical deeply logical proof, it is much more an appeal to someone’s common sense or feelings.

Generally, the conservatives like to portray themselves on trans issues as the common sense side. Think of when they extend LGBTQ with all sorts of weird letters, rolling their eyes. Or think of Dave Chappelle’s punching down specials. Or think of The One Joke. And this is a very successful starting point, because most people are not knowingly interacting with trans people, so to them trans issues are already a bit unfamiliar, or weird.

The idea behind the argument is to have the answerer realize that in fact their position is not the obvious one, and that their position is actually weird. And this is highly subjective. The point is not the answer, the point is the hoops they’ll have to jump through to get to a satisfactory trans-exlusionary answer.

It’s subjective of course, but it’s very hard for someone to write a 20 page definition of gender and then follow that up with “duh”. Or to write something like “producer of the large gametes” or whatever and feel like a normal person.